The District office responsible for deciding private-sector workers’ compensation disputes has a backlog of dozens of cases that are more than a year late, due in large part to its trouble hiring and retaining judges, according to a new Office of the Inspector General report.
Under D.C. law, the Department of Employment Services’ administrative hearings division has 90 days to hold a formal hearing on a workers’ comp case, and another 20 days for the assigned administrative law judge to render a decision.
But as of June 30, the number of cases older than 120 days had reached 149, said Terri Thompson-Mallett, the department’s chief administrative law judge. That’s up from 104 as of June 30, 2006, the inspector general found. As of Dec. 20, 41 cases more than a year late were still awaiting decisions from the judge.
“A majority of workers’ compensation attorneys surveyed stated that delays in … decisions after hearings are held are the greatest problem in DOES’ administration of workers’ compensation processes,” the IG wrote in its investigation.
The backlog, interviewees said, is due to staffing problems, specifically among administrative law judges and paralegals. For example, six of 11 administration law judge positions within DOES were vacant for most of 2005, according to the IG.
“We have increased the number of staff, which has helped,” Thompson-Mallett said. “Unfortunately, as with anything else, you still have people who exit. I don’t believe that we’ve been fully staffed for more than a month’s period at any given time.”
There are 13 judges on staff, she said.
Fingers were often pointed at the Department of Human Resources, the IG said, for its “interpretation of residency requirements and the low qualifications of many ALJ position applicants referred …”
But no matter the justification, “Obviously the delays in the adjudication process make some difference and some impact in the lives of the workers” who were injured on the job, acknowledged Mohammed Sheik, acting assistant director with the DOES labor standards bureau.
Sheik said “efforts have intensified” to improve, and he promised progress with six months.
The IG also found:
» No evidence that DOES employees are biased against injured workers
» Employees who are committed to fair and timely resolving disputes
» Workers who face staffing shortages, supervisors who are unavailable to provide assistance and ineffective case tracking
